At the time, she said: “I have lost a mum and my daughter has lost a gran. My worst fear is that David was sleeping with me and her at the same time.”

After a trial at Paisley Sheriff Court last week, Mitchell was cleared of striking her mum on the body and causing her to fall in the town last July. She was also cleared of assaulting Murphy last October by “striking him on the head with a mobile phone” and of breaching bail conditions.

Mitchell first suspected an affair in August 2009 when she went to her mum’s home in Hillington, Glasgow, late at night and found David there.

After the couple split up last year, she claims Murphy set up home with her mum and admitted he was seeing her but he now denies any relationship.

Yesterday Mitchell, from Penilee, Glasgow, said: ” I am just glad this is over and I can get on with the rest of my life.

“I will never speak to my mother again and I only have limited contact with David because of our daughter.”

Barton has since moved to Cardonald, Glasgow, while Murphy has moved into a flat in the city’s Thornliebank.

BEIJING (AP) – A year after a public spat with Beijing over censorship, Google Inc. says its business with Chinese advertisers is growing even as the Internet giant’s share of online searches in China plunges.

A major Chinese portal announced last week it would no longer use Google for search, compounding its rapid loss of market share since March last year when it closed its local search engine. The future of a Google map service that is a key part of its remaining appeal in China is in doubt.

Google’s main presence in China has become its advertising sales offices, an unusual situation for a company that dominates the Internet elsewhere.

Google risked being completely shut out of China after it angered Beijing by announcing last January it no longer wanted to comply with Web censorship. It dodged that fate but without a flagship local online presence, analysts say Google will fall further behind local industry leader Baidu Inc. as a search provider, while the controversy makes it hard to line up Chinese partners for other ventures.

“Chinese companies will think twice before they can have any kind of relationship with Google,” said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, says it sees its biggest opportunities in China in selling advertising on behalf of local websites or to companies that want to reach customers abroad through its global sites.

Google was allowed to keep advertising sales offices in China. Beijing had an incentive to let those stay, because they benefit local websites and advertisers.

“Google’s revenue in China has grown year-on-year,” said a company spokeswoman, Jessica Powell, in an e-mail. “Our business in China is doing well. We have hundreds of partners – large and small – who we continue to work with.”

Yet its public relationship with Beijing is chilly. After Chinese authorities stepped up Web censorship following pro-democracy protests in the Middle East, Google said last month the government was obstructing access to its Gmail e-mail service and trying to make the blockage look like a technical problem. The government denied the accusation.

This week, the government newspaper Economic Daily said three Google units that deal with research and development, customer support and advertising were under investigation for possible tax offenses. State media played up the report and one newspaper called the company “Brother Trouble,” a play on its Chinese name. Google said in a statement, “We believe we are, and always have been, in full compliance with Chinese tax law.”

Mainland users can reach Google’s Chinese-language site in Hong Kong, a self-governing Chinese territory without Web censorship. That comes with a big drawback: Beijing’s filters can make access sluggish, reducing the site’s appeal in China, which has more than 450 million people online.

Google does not break out sales by country, but Analysys estimated its 2010 China revenue at 2.6 billion yuan ($409 million) – or less than 1.5 percent of Google’s global revenues of $29.3 billion.

Last year’s dispute testified to the complex Internet landscape in China, which promotes Web use for business and education but has strict controls on content and blocks social media sites including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Google’s China site still offers music downloads, business services and other features that are not subject to censorship. Users can click a link to reach the Hong Kong site.

Google’s share of China’s search traffic fell to 19.6 percent in the final quarter of 2010 from 30.9 percent in the first quarter, according to Analysys. It said Baidu’s share rose to 75 percent.

Citigroup analyst Alicia Yap said data from other researchers show an even sharper plunge in Google’s traffic share to 11 percent in the fourth quarter while Baidu rose to 84 percent.

Google still is China’s second-most-popular search service based on use of the Hong Kong site and others abroad. It leads rivals such as Sogou, Tencent Soso and Zhongsou, which have market shares at or below 1 percent.

But the lack of a local presence will hurt as competition for new users spreads to mobile phones and the countryside, where users speak little English and will want a Chinese search engine, Yu said.

“Baidu is in a very good position to grab more market share,” he said.

In a new blow to its public visibility, a leading a Chinese portal, Sina.com, said this week it would no longer use Google. The search giant has ended a series of such partnerships as it stopped providing censored results.

Baidu has expanded aggressively, rolling out new services in the past year in an effort to differentiate a company long seen as a Google imitator.

New competitors including state media also are jumping into the market with search and social media products. The government’s Xinhua News Agency launched a search engine last year in a partnership with state-owned China Mobile Ltd., the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers.

Google faces another challenge from new regulations that tighten control over online map services. On Thursday, the deadline to apply for licenses, Google said it was “in discussions with the government about how we could offer a maps product in China.”

“Google maps is one of the services that people still like a lot,” said Yap. “If they can’t provide the service in the future, people will use Google less and less.”

Yu said Google’s situation might change if a planned handover of power next year from President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders to a younger generation leads to a shift in official attitudes.

“New officials will be in place,” he said, “so things could change at that time.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Supporters posting messages on Ai’s Twitter account and their own accounts said he had planned to board a flight to Hong Kong when he was detained Sunday morning.

Police then raided Ai’s studio in Beijing’s Caochangdi district early Sunday afternoon, taking the eight employees to a local police station, an assistant said via Ai’s Twitter account.

Ai’s mobile phone remained switched off on Sunday afternoon.

It was not immediately clear if he had planned to travel on from Hong Kong or only visit the Chinese territory.

In a telephone interview with the German Press Agency dpa last week, Ai, 53 said he planned to open a new studio in Berlin partly in response growing interference in his work by the Chinese government.

‘I just need the studio for working,’ Ai said. ‘However, as we all know, one studio in China has been demolished and another faces the possibility of being demolished,’ he said.

‘At the same time, my exhibitions have been cancelled. It is true that the possibility for artistic expression is very small in China,’ Ai said.

Ai said he hoped to spend ‘as little time as possible’ in Europe once he opened the Berlin studio.

‘However, there will be no choice if my work and life are somehow threatened,’ he said.

Last month, Ai said he had cancelled a solo exhibition planned for a leading Beijing gallery after the organizers requested a delay because of the ‘political sensitivity’ of his work.

‘My studio in Shanghai has been demolished. You can see it’s getting worse,’ Ai said of China’s restrictions on artists and writers.

Ai has become increasingly active in China’s human rights movement in recent years.

In September 2009, he underwent surgery in Germany for a cerebral haemorrhage that he said was caused when he and other activists were attacked in his hotel in the central city of Chengdu during the trial of rights activist Tan Zuoren.

Tan and Ai tried to determine how many children died when poorly constructed schools collapsed in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed at least 80,000 people.

Ai has gained an international reputation for his wide range of artworks, installations and performances. He was an artistic consultant for the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing.

MAYVILLE – The numbers 9-1-1 are more than just numbers. They can be one of the few things between life and death.

When those numbers are dialed, on the other end of the phones are extremely well-trained individuals whose job it is to help people through emergencies and get help to them as fast as possible.

The county’s 911 call center is the “nerve center” of all the emergency services in the county.

According to Marv Cummings, senior communications officer for the dispatch center, “it is the hub of activity for the county.”

“We are the answering point for all emergency services in the county except for the village of Fredonia and the city of Dunkirk,” he said. “If you call 911 from a cell phone or a home phone this is where it gets answered. We are pretty much the quarterback of the department.”

Sheriff Joseph Gerace said that the call center handles all 911 and other emergency calls and radio traffic for the county.

“They really are the nucleus of the emergency response system, from the first call that comes in, through coordination of the entire event,” he said. “It is a critical function of public safety.”

CAPABILITIES

Among the programs that are used by the center is the enhanced 911 program, which provides much information from a simple phone call.

“It gives us not only the caller’s voice, but also a data stream that comes with that call that provides the name of the party that the phone is registered to, their specific address, the appropriate fire, police and EMS providers.” said Gerace.

The data stream the systems gives the dispatcher displays many different types of information.

“We are able to pinpoint your exact locations using the GPS off of your cell phone, so we are able to tell where each person is calling from,” said Cummings. “If you call 911, it displays the name of the person or company that is calling, their address, and I am able to send them help.”

This helps dispatch immensely, he said.

“When the weather is bad, when there is a big storm in Chautauqua County, a lot of cars go off the road,” he said. “A lot of travelers who come into the county on (Interstate) 86, they go off the road, they have no idea where they are at, they call 911 on their cell phone, we have to find out where they are at. We can find their locations using the coordinates off their phone and then send them help,” he said.

This is part of the system called computer-aided dispatch, or CAD.

“In most cases we can acquire the longitude and latitude of the call and it is accurate within approximately 100 meters of the caller’s actual location, which can be a lifesaver if people do not know where they are or are unable to communicate their location to us,” Gerace said. “It connects to our computer-aided dispatch systems, which we have even more information available, including hazardous situations that may be present at that address. It then allows us to look up for instance if there is a wanted person at that address, if there have been previous incidents within a short period of time, if there is a gun registered to somebody at that house, if there are any associated hits, for instance somebody who might be an associate of another person, usually this a criminal matter, it would give us that heads up.”

The CAD system also interfaces with the National Crime Information Center.

“All of our mobile computers in the patrol cars are connected to dispatch, so they can actually silently dispatch a car and get response back from the field without going over the radio,” said Gerace. “Normally that is not done, it is only in certain situations that we use silent dispatch, and that would be if there is reason to believe the perpetrator is monitoring police frequencies.”

The department also uses a system called automated vehicle locators to see units in real time on a map, which they use to determine who is the closest to an incident and dispatch them as soon as possible.

“We can see where the patrol cars are at any given time throughout the county, which is a huge benefit to the safety of the officers on the street and also the deployment of the resources, because they can see who is closest to the call and coordinate responses when you have multiple agencies responding,” said Gerace.

During peak times, said Cummings, six people staff the center, and during other times, four people are there to take calls. The center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“In this room, we have one person dedicated to dispatching the Sheriff’s Department and all the outlying departments, like the town of Ellicott, Westfield Police and Silver Creek Police, we have one person who is dedicated to the city of Jamestown Police Department and the Lakewood-Busti Police Department, and we have one person dedicated to fire,” said Cummings. “He does all the volunteer fire departments and the city of Jamestown Fire Department.”

According to Cummings, it is normally the busiest in the center from 9 a.m. until 3 a.m., and usually it is a little bit quieter from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m.

“The 911 phone doesn’t really stop ringing. We get hundreds of 911 calls a day that come into this office,” he said. “When the weather is bad outside, when we have a storm, this place is total chaos, you can imagine how busy this place can get. There is very little downtime in this office, the phones pretty much never stop.”

CALL VOLUME

Hundreds of calls flood the center each day, said Cummings.

In 2010, the center received 59,000 emergencies calls. This does not include the administrative calls they also handle.

“They handle tens of thousands of 911 calls a year,” said Gerace. “And many more administrative calls. It is estimated we take 10 times as many admin calls.”

Daily the center deals with a few hundred calls a day, in 911 emergencies only.

“During the daytime, we take a lot of calls from people that are checking on incidents that happened on a previous shift, at night time. accident records, they have to talk to investigators about previous incidents, all those calls come into this office,” said Cummings. “You go from low one minute to high the next. You can be taking a report of a stolen bicycle one minute to a woman’s mother who is not breathing, and having to walk them through CPR.”

HISTORY

“Over the years there has been significant consolidation of dispatch services, mostly due to economics,” said Gerace.

In the 1970s, Lakewood, Falconer, Silver Creek, Jamestown, Dunkirk and Fredonia all had their own dispatchers. Over time these consolidated.

On Jan. 8, 2004, the city of Jamestown’s communication center consolidated with the county.

“That was about a five-year process,” said Gerace. “The whole planning and merging, consolidating databases and doing all the technological connectivity and merging employees, that took a considerable amount of time. We got down to minutia so detailed that we can even open and close the garage bay doors in the fire stations and police stations, we can do that from Mayville.”

HOW IT WORKS

The time it takes from taking the call to dispatching calls is instantaneous, both Gerace and Cummings said.

“We have a system of call takers and dispatchers, but it is a small area so the call taker, while they are entering the call, they are telling the dispatchers to dispatch,” said Gerace.

At peak times, three people act as call takers, who take and enter the information and forward it to the dispatcher who dispatches the resources.

“Once the dispatcher gets the information on his screen, they will decide how many police cars if it is a police matter, need to respond,” said Cummings. “If it is a medical emergency or fire, it is all predetermined which to dispatch.”

Dispatchers are also constantly in contact with judges, utility companies, wrecker services and coroner.

WHAT TO EXPECT

For those who call 911, many questions will be asked to determine the nature of the emergency and what resources need to respond.

The first question will be “Where are you?”

“When you call 911, be prepared to give an exact location and the exact problem you are calling about, those are the two biggest important questions,” said Cummings.

Once the location is verified, dispatchers determine the nature of the emergency.

“They would ask certain questions of the caller, and may instruct them to perform certain pre-arrival functions, like CPR or the Heimlich,” said Gerace.

Depending on what type of emergency it is, if it is police related, they are going to ask a lot of questions, said Cummings.

“We are going to try to figure out what the problem is, what kind of help we need to send you,” he said. “If it is a medical emergency, we are able to provide pre-arrival instructions. For instance if you call 911 and someone is having a medical emergency, the dispatcher is going to ask you questions to pinpoint what the problem is. If it uncontrolled bleeding, we are prepared to tell you how to control the bleeding; if its a person who is not breathing, we are prepared to walk you through CPR.”

CHALLENGES

The greatest challenge, according to Cummings is remaining calm.

“If someone calls and is excited or hysterical, if you are the same way, it is not going to help the situation,” said Cummings. “Most people that call in medical emergencies are hysterical. So the first thing we need to do is calm the person down, so they can answer some simple questions we have for them. If a person is hysterical and screaming on the phone it is very hard for us to get them to calm down and answer the questions we need to answer before we can send them help. We need to break that threshold so to speak.”

Another challenge is knowing the county.

“You really have to know the entire county as far as the geographics,” he said. “The better you know the county, the easier your job is going to be.”

“They have to be knowledgeable of the county, how to multitask and how to stay calm during very stressful situations,” said Gerace. “It can go from 0 to 100 instantly. It can go from calm to one of the most significant events of their career.”

Assisting those on the other end of the phone in medical matters can also be challenging.

“We have assisted delivering babies over the phone, we have successfully assisted people using the Heimlich maneuver, performing CPR so our people have to be proficient in those areas,” said Gerace. “It is hard enough to do it at the scene, to instruct somebody to do it over the telephone and verify it is being done right presents an even greater challenge.”

NEW YORK — American Express has created an online- and mobile-payments platform that will compete with Visa and PayPal.

Serve, as it’s called, is a prepaid electronic wallet that can be funded by linking with a checking account, debit card or credit card, said Dan Schulman, group president of enterprise growth at New York-based AmEx. Serve customers may send money to each other with their smartphones, shop online and receive plastic cards for use at bricks-and-mortar retailers that accept American Express.

AmEx doesn’t issue checking account-linked debit cards, the world’s fastest-growing payment method, as the company lacks a branch network. That’s put AmEx at a competitive disadvantage with lenders that issue debit cards, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase.

“This is really the first time that American Express is going to be able to address those consumers that typically would utilize either a debit card or checking account,” Schulman, 53, said in a phone interview last week. “There’s a large cultural shift happening at American Express in terms of us really moving to becoming more of a software- and platform-based company.”

Global consumer spending and cash transactions on Visa and MasterCard Inc. debit cards climbed 20 percent to $3.95 trillion last year, according to the companies’ operational-performance data. In the United States, spending on debit cards rose 15 percent in 2010, compared with 6.3 percent for credit cards, according to the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.

AmEx, the world’s third-biggest payments network, is looking to take market share from PayPal, a unit of San Jose, Calif.-based EBay Inc. and larger rivals Visa and MasterCard, based in Purchase, N.Y. Visa, based in San Francisco, said in a statement on March 16 that it will let U.S. consumers send funds worldwide from one eligible Visa card account to another.

Last year, AmEx spent $305 million to buy Internet-based payment processor Revolution Money from the investment firm run by Steve Case, the co-founder of America Online Inc. Revolution Money became the technological foundation for Serve, said Schulman, who joined AmEx in August from Sprint Nextel Corp.

Consumers can open accounts at www.serve.com and download an application to their Apple iPhones and iPads, or smartphones using the Android operating system, Schulman said. Users of Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry will have access later this year, he said.

Fees for funding accounts with credit cards are waived for the first six months. After that, AmEx will charge 2.9 percent of the transaction total plus 30 cents, which is competitive with PayPal’s pricing, said Joanna Lambert, an AmEx spokeswoman. There’s no charge for using debit cards or checking accounts to fund a Serve account.

INDUSTRIES that produce mobile phone games and videos may have to self-regulate and classify their own products, in a significant change to the way Australia censors information and entertainment in an internet age.

The federal government has warned that Australia cannot create an ”army of classifiers” to assess the huge amount of new material available to people – particularly mobile phone games, video and applications.

At present some banned computer games are available uncensored on smartphones. And producers of phone applications and games have complained that submitting their products to the Classification Board will be too costly.

The Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, said while it was unlikely films would move to self-regulation, it was impractical for the Classification Board to check material across all new platforms.

”It may be that we reduce regulation,” he said.

”There may be more obligations on industry to deal with matters in a self-regulatory way,” he said.

”The amount of information people have to look at to classify is growing and we cannot create an army of classifiers – it is too unwieldy and expensive.”

Last month the Australian Law Reform Commission began the first major review of the National Classification Scheme in 20 years.

Mr O’Connor said he did not want to pre-empt the review’s findings, but self-regulation was likely to feature in a new system.

The commission review will look at the current classification categories, the rapid pace of technological change, the effect of media on children, and how to classify mobile and online games.

The games industry welcomed the minister’s comments on self-regulation.

”There’s a large push from a wide group to have a system that is self-regulated,” said Ron Curry, head of the industry body Interactive Games and Entertainment Association.

”But there’s also a large conservative voice that wants the government to be more responsible for censorship and moral policing.”

Last time I wrote in this space, I was all grumpy about ground rents for scout troops. It seemed utterly stupid, to me, to risk pricing out of existence a force of total good: an organisation that teaches children altruism, focus and practical skills. And the greatest of these is focus.

“Just look at them on Jamie’s School Dinners!” I roared. “Texting and twiddling on their mobile phones, while the teacher is speaking! That’s because nobody ever showed them how to sit quietly and do one blasted thing at a time! Four hours trying to pitch a tent in the rain, that’s what would have taught those little weevils to concentrate!”

Well, look what’s happened now. I turn my back for a minute and the Speaker rules that MPs may use iPads and Blackberries in the House of Commons. What? Do these middle-aged, professional debaters now have no attention span either? Is it just not interesting enough to argue about whether to bomb Libya or axe hospitals, without surfing porn and playing Tetris at the same time?

Maybe they’d like to have a television set in there, so they can watch Peter Andre: The Next Chapter during Prime Minister’s Questions? Or would they prefer a live band? A basketball hoop? A paddling pool?

The idea of MPs texting and emailing through debates makes my gorge rise, as it does when a minicab driver makes phone calls at the wheel. I’m not paying you to keep in touch with your mates! I’m paying you to deliver me safely to my destination/challenge the defence budget, and I’m paying enough for you to do it WITH YOUR FULL BLOODY ATTENTION ON THE JOB!

Politicians are saying this will be a way for them to keep up to date with constituency business while sitting in the House. I hear the distant voice of Mandy Rice-Davies pointing out that they would, wouldn’t they.

Oh, I’m sure they’d mean to. They’d mean to whip out the iPad purely to ensure that Mrs Smithers is getting the leak fixed in her council house. But we all know how the internet works. I’m sitting in front of my laptop now because I mean to write a column. Nevertheless, between the last paragraph and this one, I played a game of online poker, read a long joke emailed by someone I’ve never particularly liked, and typed “the world’s silliest face” into Google just to see what happened.

(Oddly, it came back with the question, “Did you mean the world’s scariest face?” No, I didn’t. I don’t want to see the world’s scariest face. If you do, try typing “the world’s silliest face” into Google – although not, ideally, if you’re currently driving me to Paddington.)

Anyone who’s tuned in to the House of Commons TV coverage knows the benches are often empty. I like that. I’m a big fan of political transparency. It’s good for us to know which debates the MPs consider important enough to show up for, and which not. I don’t want to be tricked into thinking that the House is full and everybody’s taking something seriously, when the backbenchers are all secretly on their Blackberries, forwarding jokes and bidding on eBay.

This is not a rant against MPs. A friend of mine is an MP and he’s an extremely motivated, hard-working, dedicated fellow – which doesn’t mean all of them are, but it certainly means that not all of them aren’t. I’m sure the majority are slaving away at this tough job for all the right reasons. If they are not getting enough money, or enough time, to balance constituency work and national business, they must find the bottle to say so and change the system.

No; this is a rant against the creeping acceptability of engaging in electronic communication all the time : on the bus, over dinner, in the cinema. We are all, truly, losing the power to concentrate hard and clearly on any single thing for a significant period of time.

I choose not to carry the internet in my pocket (you can barely make phone calls on my mobile; it operates mainly as a paperweight) but I know my attention span has shrunk merely from having it at home. Most days, my web-jaded brain feels like a drunken bee that’s been fished out of a pint glass. That is not the state in which I want David Cameron’s brain to be, when he’s deciding how much tax I’m going to pay, or how close I’m going to live to a nuclear reactor.

Feud mixer

Speaking of nuclear reaction, please don’t be cross when I tell you that I had lunch with Michael Winner last week.

Some readers might remember that Mr Winner and I had a “Twitter feud” a few weeks ago, after some online remarks that are better unrepeated. We had never met. My feelings about the remarks are unchanged.

But I was touched when he suggested lunch. I’ve always hated the idea of carrying grudges and resentments around like a load of mouldy suitcases. And you know what? In the flesh, he was charming. Funny, kindly, not at all unchivalrous. Slightly scary with the waiters. My brother was there; I enjoyed watching the two critics kvetch professionally about service times and whether the tablecloth should be changed, while I thought: “Ooh, it’s nice that someone else is doing the cooking”.

Everyone is complicated, with several sides. I’m sure Michael Winner will say many things in the future that I wouldn’t say myself. But I enjoyed his company, to the point of feeling genuine affection. He was just a twinkly, mischievous old fellow. I hope I won’t ruin our new entente cordiale by observing that, sitting opposite him, I suddenly missed my grandfather.

Then again, as Holden Caulfield said, sooner or later you start missing everybody.

Compromising clip of scolded schoolboy Saucy actress Kree Phaswipitch has laid bare her feelings for a 15-year-old singer whom she flaunted as a love interest, but insisted was merely a friend.

Wattana ‘Uab Uan’ Chumsai na Ayuthaya and Kree Phaswipitch.

A sound clip is circulating on the internet, said to be of Kree chastising her schoolboy admirer, socialite Wattana “Uab Uan” Chumsai na Ayuthaya.

Uan embarrassed Kree by escorting another woman to an industry event, even as the two were supposedly still an item. Kree, who has yet to hear the clip, is threatening legal action if any more are released.

She made a back-up copy of her mobile phone conversations when she went to a shop to buy a new phone. But is not sure how the clip entered the public domain.

“This clip has the potential to do me long-term damage. I am gathering evidence, and could seek a remedy in court,” she said.

While they were still together, Kree took Uab Uan to industry functions, saying she didn’t care what people thought about their age difference.

“Fifteen is just a number,” she said, while admitting the age gap had caused communication problems. She is 13 years his senior.

“We’re just friends, but I admit he fits my specs, and who knows what the future holds,” she said in December.

Uab Uan, however, later found another older woman who took his fancy. He took Kerika “Ginny” Chortwijit, singer from the band Sweet D, to a function that Kree was also attending.

In the clip, the woman identified as Kree said the sight of another woman there with Uan humiliated her. “Just last week, you and I went to a function together. Then you take another girl to the same function I was attending,” she said.

“Let me speak plainly. If I had done such a thing to you, how would you feel?” she asked.

“I’m sorry … I really didn’t look at it that way,” replied the caller identified as Uan.

Asked after the function about where her relationship with Uan stood, Kree denied she was dumped, or that she had ended up looking silly.

“We were only ever just friends, so why should I feel angry?”

However, in the sound clip, the person identified as Kree said she can’t easily forgive Uan’s slight.

“I was stunned,” said Kree. “At least you could have told me. So many people asked me what had happened. ‘Aren’t you going out together?’ they asked. ‘How could Uan do such a thing?”‘

“OK, we’re now just friends, but people don’t yet know. I feel bad _ numb actually. It’s almost as if you brought along that woman to mock me,” said Kree.

“I really didn’t mean to do that,” Uan spluttered.

Asked after the function whom he preferred, Uan insisted Kree was merely a big sister type. “I’m closest to Ginny, though we are not yet going out with each other,” he said.

Uan, who has heard part of the clip and confirms it is him, said he called Kree to clear up any misunderstanding.

They had spoken once since the call, and Kree had met Ginny without any problem.

“I’m scared that I’ve upset her, but she won’t give me the chance to clear up the matter,” he said.

Uan and Ginny turned up together at another function last week, where Ginny denied acting as a third hand forcing Uan and Kree apart.

“Uan is my closest guy friend at the moment. Our families are happy with our relationship, but whether we will end up as boyfriend and girlfriend is a matter for the future,” she said.

Weir in the mix after Pancake

Actor Sukollawat “Weir” Kanaros is making the most of life as a single man, saying he is too busy to forge romantic ties since his relationship with A-list actress Kemanij “Pancake” Jamikorn ended.

Last week, Weir made a rare appearance at a function amid reports that since he and Pancake split, his star has waned.

Weir denied it, saying he was making three TV soap operas at once, and doesn’t have time to meet people, including women.

However, he has bought himself a home worth almost 10 million baht to lift his spirits.

Pancake is now seeing actor and singer Arak “Pae” Amornsupasiri, in what is probably the hottest unconfirmed pairing in the industry since the days when Pancake and Weir were an item.

Weir, who was close to Pancake’s family, bought a house close to Pancake’s own, to be close to her.

When their relationship ended, he moved back into live with his manager Supachai “A” Sriwichit, who runs a talent stable from his home.

After Weir parted from Pancake, his place and Pancake’s own were too close for comfort.

Pancake bought the house from Weir, so the two would not have to meet. Weir has now bought a new place for himself with the proceeds, in the Ratchada-Rarm Intra area.

“If my mum hadn’t dragged me along, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, but now that I am there, I am happy,” he said.

“It’s small, cosy and I live alone. My neighbours are businessmen and doctor types. No one is interested in anyone else’s business … they just go to work, and come home to rest.

“I’m starting to decorate the place, and might ask some of my friends, who know interior design, to help,” he said, adding that while being single has its lonely moments, he was happy to focus on work for the time being.

If Mario comes back into her life, he must make clear whether it is as a mere friend, or boyfriend, she told reporters last week.

Koop Kip put their relationship on hold in February, complaining it had failed to “develop”. Although she insisted they were merely friends _ the two have known each other for six years _ few believed her.

Mario (Love of Siam, 4 Romances, Rahtree Reborn) agreed with Koop Kip, saying that at their age, talk of love was premature, as both were too busy making money.

However, Mario has said since that he wants to get back into Koop Kip’s good books.

Koop Kip, still stinging from criticism that the pair was less than honest about their relationship, has now passed the buck back to the superstar actor.

“He says he wants to go back to the way things were, but for me that means going back as friends.

“This time, he has to make it clear whether he comes back as my boyfriend, or merely a friend _ no more hiding,” she said.

Mario said he is too busy to see much of Koop Kip, but they do meet for meals. He denied they broke up to seek attention. “We have to take things gradually, but I would like our relationship to develop so that we are more than just friends,” he said.

Who’s your daddy?

A legal dispute stemming from the paternity battle between superstar Rattapoom “Film” Tokongsub and the woman who claims she bore their child is showing signs of progress.

The parties met at the Thon Buri Court in Pathum Thani last month for an hour of conciliation talks. While no conclusions were reached, Hia Hor’s lawyer proposed that Annie withdraw all suits she has taken in relation to the case. In return, Hai Hor’s side would withdraw all action it has taken against her.

In October, Hia Hor suggested Annie was seeing four men late last year at the time she supposedly fell pregnant with Film’s baby.

Lawyers Association (Thon Buri) chairman Sakrit Jiamkamon, who is acting for Annie, said the talks went well. He would discuss the proposal with Annie, and the two sides would meet again on April 26.

There is no mobile media and limited texting on my phone, and I plan to keep it that way for as long as I can. Still, a colleague recently reprimanded me on our way into court one morning because he had been trying to respond to my call from the prior day with numerous texts and emails starting at six that morning. He said I was too hard to get ahold of — at the crack of dawn, mind you. My response: “Mission accomplished.”

I’m not interested in talking to work, my husband, my children, nor anyone other than my Creator at 6 a.m., and even then, there’s a lot of mumbling and incoherency going on.

The way I see it, business is for business hours and if others want to extend their business hours to 24 hours a day because they have the technology to do so, that’s their aneurysm and gray hairs, not mine. And, other than the fact that I have to occasionally remind people of this, I have no real grudge toward the abundance and dependence of cell phone usage.

Until now.

It has become evident that many people prefer the social media on their phones to actual human contact. I attended a dinner engagement where I’d say a good half of the attendees were texting, emailing, or checking web pages in lieu of engaging in the conversations right in front of their faces. Almost every Sunday at church, I see the same thing — and I sit in the third row. If the two rows closest to the pastor think nothing of texting during a sermon, what in the world is going on in the 30-something rows behind me?

I don’t want to make a big ol’ brouhaha on technology, lifting my proverbial leg on electronic media, but I do want to state for the record that there is a time and place for that stuff, and church, school, dinner parties, dates, etc. are — absent an emergency — not that place.

But if I can’t appeal to people through a sense of urgency to mind their manners, I’d like to try a different approach and say that pulling your phone out in social environments robs you of one of the greatest and most overlooked skill sets known to mankind: reading body language.

You can’t tell if a person’s sneering at you in an email any more than a young girl can tell if a guy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing from a text. And while it’s OK to use electronic mediums to get information out quickly, or use as quick, sporadic maintenance in busy relationships, I’m stupefied when someone uses these mediums as the core of their interaction with others. Researchers have said that 90 percent of what people are trying to convey happens in their physical movements. If an electronic medium is the core of your relationship, congratulations, you only know 10 percent of a human being. My goodness, I hope they don’t have a spare key to your house.

Sherri Stevens, an iPhone and iPad owner, as well as an employee in our local communications field, could arguably be the stereotypical mobile media-monger, but she isn’t. I asked her what she thought about people pulling out their phones and texting or emailing during social events and she said, “We live in a world where people know their cell phones better than they do each other. The overuse of cell phones has become a barrier in marriages and rude at social gatherings. We can text paragraphs but barely speak half a sentence.”

I wonder where this is all headed if people — especially young ones who have had cell phones since second grade — continue to forego human contact for their precious cell phones. I take the following 17-year-old’s recent dating experience as a warning. Jaisyn Martin, a local high school student, said this of her recent boyfriend, “We basically only had a texting relationship, and it made it to where when we were in person, he wouldn’t hold my hand. But when we talked in texts, he would be affectionate … he’d tell me how pretty I looked that day, but he had a harder time telling me in person.”

I know it’s an overdramatic worse-case scenario, (and a bit shaped by my husband’s favorite movie), but I’m picturing a bunch of Gollums from Lord of the Rings, living in caves, pasty beyond recognition and scavenging the woods for slow, dim-witted rabbits because they can’t find a grocery store ever since their GPS went on the fritz. Every night they stroke their phones, slurring, “My precious…precious…precious.”

One app to rule them all.

Bottom line is that I don’t care if your cell phone can give you directions, calculate a tip, count calories, change the baby, or unclog the toilet; I’m begging you to put that thing down and give me eye contact.

— Heather Ijames is one of three community columnists whose work appears here every Saturday. These are the opinions of Ijames, not necessarily The Californian’s. You can send e-mail to her at hijames@bakersfield.com. Next week: Inga Barks.

Making calls with your cell phone while traveling abroad can be a hefty investment. Domestic carriers have a wide range of international calling plans and roaming fees that can quickly add up.

But there are some alternatives coming onto the market.

Canadian company Polar Wireless has come out with a “global key chip,” a thin SIM card that can be inserted into most GSM (which account for more than 80 percent of the market) and some CDMA cell phones, which allows users to bypass their carrier’s roaming fees.

Polar Wireless’ average rates are 28 cents per minute, compared to what the company claims are the average international carrier rates of $2.59 per minute.

Polar Wireless subscribers with GSM devices will be able to take their phone (with their existing phone number) to 213 countries with 500 partner carrier networks. They will have access to voice, data and texting services. The company says it provides carrier grade connectivity via standard cell phone towers globally.

Polar Wireless touted that one of the advantages of the global key chip over mobile services such as Skype or Google Talk is that those require Wi-fi, which is not available everywhere.

Another option is getting a global phone. Tour company Big Five Tours & Expeditions has partnered with Wireless Traveler to promote Wireless Traveler’s global phones, which can be purchased for between $95 and $180. With the Wireless Traveler plan, the phones work in more than 200 countries and have no monthly fees.

Users are charged per call and per text. So, for example, if you’re with your phone in France, an outgoing call to the U.S. costs 65 cents per minute and outgoing texts to the U.S. are 38 cents per minute. Incoming calls and texts from the U.S. to your phone in France are free. Rates vary depending on which country you’re in and which country you’re calling to, so it’s worth comparing and doing the math compared to your carrier’s calling plan.

More from Budget Travel:

Using Your Cell Phone in Europe

What’s the biggest phone bill you’ve ever been socked with after returning from a trip?